remains mere impressions in my mind now, decades later. I can't remember the title (even with 10 minutes of Internet searching) or the author, just the bare bones of the plot: a woman decides to leave her husband and two children to go to graduate school. When I read it (as an undergraduate), I just couldn't understand how someone could leave her children like that OR how she could live in the stultifying environment that was her life -- and the novel made it pretty clear that there was no middle ground. So I found the atmosphere of the novel claustrophobic.
Now that I'm the mother of an almost four-year-old, I have a deeper appreciation for just how gut-wrenching her decision must have been -- as well as less sympathy for her because she sidelined her own needs to follow a socially prescribed path, leading to heartbreak for her children. As we read Colm Toibin's The South and Michael Cunningham's The Hours, I'm sure we'll be exploring this dilemma from a multitude of angles.
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